Digital Archives Relying on Blockchain: Overcoming the Limitations of Data Immutability

Archives, both analogue and digital, are primarily concerned with preserving records as originals. Because of this, immutable data as used in a blockchain data structure seem a logical choice when designing such systems. At the same time, archives maintain records which may need to change over the long term. It is a requirement of archival preservation to be able to update records’ metadata in order not only to guarantee authenticity after digital preservation actions but also to ensure that relationships to other records, which might be created after an original record has entered the archive (and has been registered in a blockchain), can be maintained. The need to maintain an archival bond, which represents a network of relationships between aggregation of records, i.e., the relationship connecting previous and subsequent records belonging to the same activity, is a prime example of this requirement. This paper explores realisation of the archival bond in the context of blockchain-based archival system by proposing a supporting database system which enables metadata to be changed as required but also significantly simplifies searching compared to searching on-chain information, while keeping the immutability characteristic of blockchain.

Archival Knowledge: Conceptual Frameworks for Recent Terminology in the KO Domain

Despite having the principle of provenance as its guiding element, the archival knowledge organization still prescinds, for conceptual purposes, of greater clarity of its object-the archival knowledge-a fundamental aspect for the sedimentation of the archival studies and of its discursive community in the scope of KO. This article aims to define a conceptual framework to archival knowledge by using Dahlberg’s concept theory. In this vein, it established the nominal concept or definiendum-archival knowledge-seeking to analyze its real definition, composed by three inseparable definiens: the concept of fonds, the knowledge of documentary form and the knowledge of document creation context. At the end, it demonstrates that archival knowledge can be defined as being a reunion of three indivisible facets in which the archival bond will be contemplated.

Alguns apontamentos sobre a Classificação de Documentos de Arquivo

The work assumes that the classification of records is a matrix function of archival practice and plays a key role in records management. Unrated is almost impossible to work with evaluation and the description, which together form the heart of archival practices. Provide the basis for other archival functions is not the only purpose of classification, it is crucial for the maintenance of the archival bond and to allow access to records and information. It searches from a flyover in the literature on the topic, discuss sensitive aspects to the classification of records, such as: the change in the ways of searching for documents and information in contemporary organizations; risks of leverage plans for classification in search tasks; the limitations of the functional method for structure classification schemes, among others. And in the end, it proposes ways to overcome some of these problems.